Follow this link to my BLOCKBUSTER STORY of how Brett Kimberlin, a convicted terrorist and perjurer, attempted to frame me for a crime, and then got me arrested for blogging when I exposed that misconduct to the world. That sounds like an incredible claim, but I provide primary documents and video evidence proving that he did this. And if you are moved by this story to provide a little help to myself and other victims of Mr. Kimberlin’s intimidation, such as Robert Stacy McCain, you can donate at the PayPal buttons on the right. And I thank everyone who has done so, and will do so.

Now, first the database is useful
to some degree. For instance through it
I have already seen a case where a black man successfully invokes self-defense
in the shooting of a white man in questionable circumstances, and is not even
charged with a crime. This is a ready
answer to the claim that no black person could get away with doing what George
Zimmerman did.

But the idea that you can treat
this as any kind of representative sample is just plain silly. Here’s what the Tampa Bay Times says about
its database:

The Tampa Bay Times
used media reports, court records and interviews with prosecutors and attorneys
to identify more than 200 “stand your ground” cases across Florida. The list,
though incomplete, is the most comprehensive in the state and likely includes
most fatal cases.

So they are telling us
that the database is incomplete. So how
can we be assured that we are getting anything close to a true picture of what
is happening in Florida? Further, in all
bluntness, I don’t trust media reports on this subject. As you will see, they get things wrong. Just in the first eighteen, I saw them leave
out significant and relevant facts in the Trayvon Martin case, label people who
would ordinarily be considered Hispanic as “white,” and incorrectly suggest
that assailants who tried to run a guy down in a jeep was armed only with a
bat.

The other problem was that
looking through the database, I saw cases that had nothing to do with Stand
Your Ground. Now this point deserves a
little clarification. Stand Your Ground
can best be associated with two features of Florida law that is shared by
most—but not all—states. The first is
that there is no duty to attempt retreat unless you are the aggressor. That is what “Stand Your Ground” most
directly references. As in you can stand
your ground and defend yourself, instead of being punished if you choose not to
retreat.

Further, there is another unusual
rule in Florida law that provides for an immunity hearing before the criminal
case begins. More or less, if the
Defendant can prove by a preponderance of the evidence that he was acting in
self-defense, they can skip the entire trial.
I have yet to hear anyone complain about this rule, but it was part of
the package of reforms included in the Stand Your Ground legislation and is
thus associated with it.

The rest of Florida’s laws are
actually pretty ordinary and I think a great deal of the hysteria over the case
involves people discovering what is actually in the law of most states for the
first time. In most states, if you
reasonably believe that deadly force is necessary to prevent death or serious
injury, you can use such force. Some of
the hysteria comes from people not paying attention to all of the words involved. I hear people say, “but you mean that if I
think all black people are dangerous I can just start shooting black people?”
or some other scenario involving a paranoid and unreasonable fear of death or
serious bodily injury. And the answer is
“no.” That is why that word “reasonable”
is up there. Shooting a person because
you think they are secretly a space alien or because you think all people of a
certain ethnic group are “scary” is not reasonable.

So generalized findings that you
were afraid for your life and justified in shooting as a result has nothing to
do with Stand Your Ground, and indeed is not even an unusual feature in Florida
law. Likewise, it has nothing to do with
Stand Your Ground is when a court rules that you have no duty to retreat in
your own home. You should consult your
local laws, but I believe that there isn’t a single state in the union that
requires you to retreat from your own home—at least from an intruder. It is worth nothing that prior to Stand Your
Ground being passed, that Florida required
an abused wife to flee her home if possible.

So let me dig through the
data. I might very well publish as my
analysis is in progress. But I will show
you whether the data demonstrates either Stand Your Ground No Retreat Rules
(“SYG-No-Retreat”) or Stand Your Ground Immunity (SYG-Immunity)—meaning cases
where the immunity hearing was granted—and anything else worth noting.

So let’s dig in, shall we?

First, I will refer to these
cases by the name of the first victim listed, because it is as good as any
method. And please note that I will start
with the fatal cases first. I have not
yet decided if I will explore the non-fatal cases.

Shervadia was nine and since the
discussion is focused on race, she is black as were all of the men convicted in
relation to her death. Now of course you
might reasonably wonder, “how can you claim self-defense against a nine year
old?” The answer is that sometimes in
the course of exercising lawful self-defense you accidentally harm a third
party. I am not going to spend half an
hour researching this point of law in Florida, so I will rely on Wayne R.
LaFave and Austin W. Scott, Jr. Criminal
Law 462 (2d Ed, 1986) when it says that the common rule is that if you
are acting in lawful self-defense, you are only held liable for the injuries to
third parties if you were acting recklessly.
Do consult your local laws on this subject and wholly apart from any
legal duty, if you have to defend your own life or another’s exercise great
care that you don’t harm anyone else.

The underlying facts involve a
shootout, possibly over drugs. This took
place on the lawns of the gentlemen, but the no retreat rule for your dwelling
doesn’t apply to your yard. The
described facts don’t make it clear who started shooting first. But some quick research into the caselaw can
give you a slightly
more detailed understanding of the facts.
The short version is that Damon Darling said he perceived a threat from
Leroy LaRose, and thus fired first.

Now, at first blush this appears
to be a Stand Your Ground case, but there is an interesting wrinkle. As the court noted,

Moreover, the
"stand your ground" law specifically requires that the person
invoking the defense "not [be] engaged in an unlawful activity." §
776.013(3); see also Dorsey v. State, 74 So.3d 521 (Fla. 4th DCA 2011) (holding
that possession of a firearm by a convicted felon qualifies as an unlawful
activity within the "stand your ground" law).

The court goes on to explain that
Darling himself was a felon and thus was unlawfully possessing a firearm, thus
fitting exactly within that precedent.
This didn’t mean he could never defend himself, but it did mean he had a
duty to retreat.

So we have a failed attempt to
invoke SYG-Immunity. But otherwise this
is not a SYG case, because the law didn’t actually allow him to stand his
ground.

Okay part of me was tempted to
make a joke about the late pop star, but we are talking about a dead fifteen
year old, so I will avoid it. This was
another shoot-out, only the victim was allegedly at least in a gang involved in
the fire fight. So he was not an
entirely innocent young man, although if you want to lament that a young life
went down that path, I won’t disagree with you.

The case was in public (so SYG-no-retreat was involved), and two
of the defendants were granted SYG-immunity.
A third man pled guilty to manslaughter, although it wasn’t clear what
the basis was besides bringing Jackson to the gunfight.

The TBT says it is unclear who
initiated it, but in all bluntness, the court records would have the judge’s
findings on the subject, or at least a finding whether these Defendants who
were granted immunity started it.

This case involves multiple
teenagers, including a victim and killer* who are referred to as “white” but with Spanish
family names. As you will see in a moment, the TBT seems to have a problem labelling as "white" people society normally considers to be "Hispanic." As I have said, the only
relevance of race is the persistence of racism, so the only useful definition
of race is to predict what racists would think of them. Would white racists hate them for their
color? Would Hispanic racists embrace
them as one of their own? One can only
guess.

In any case, the victim was one
of a group of guys who were bullying Savvedra and Saavedra pulled a knife and
stabbed Nuno repeatedly, killing him.

There was no duty to retreat, but
the facts suggest he was trying to anyway, so it is unclear whether
SYG-no-retreat helped him. But he was
granted SYG-immunity.

By the way that is really nice of
the TBT to put the fact that the killer was learning disabled in the
article. Glad everyone who Googles his name
ever will know that, exposing him to a lifetime of discrimination. That was a great thing for them to do. (Note: I am being sarcastic.)

Two white guys, as part of two
groups, maybe gangs. This is how they
described the defendant, Menard’s claim of self-defense:

Menard, who had a
concealed weapons permit, said he fired because he feared being attacked and
saw one of the opposing group members carrying what turned out to be a pellet
gun shaped like an Uzi. Menard, 24, fired five times into the crowd, wounding
two and killing Jake Couture, 17.

On its face that sounds like
self-defense, but I will grant the jury the benefit of the doubt in determining
that he was not acting reasonably.

And it’s worth taking a moment to
explain this. I always recognize the
limits of my knowledge. I didn’t see
this guy as he testified. I didn’t hear
all the evidence. So I am not going to
second-guess the jury, without that base of information. Of course juries do get it wrong now and
then, but my baseline is that the jury is right until I see evidence convincing
me they were wrong. That is a
significant difference between these case and, say, the Zimmerman case, where I
heard all of the witness testimony, saw all the evidence, heard all the
arguments. I know as much as the jury
knew in the Zimmerman case, so if they had reached the wrong conclusion, I
would have felt comfortable saying that.

Since this was not on their
property, this was a SYG-no-retreat case, but he failed to win it. There is no suggestion he sought
SYG-immunity.

I am going to skip over this case
for the most part because it is pending.
So I don’t feel comfortable that the facts listed are accurate. The only thing worth noting is that the
victim is black and about the same age as Trayvon Martin and the killer was
white and he was charged. Beyond that
and noting that it appears to be a probable SYG-no-retreat rule case, I don’t
feel comfortable discussing the facts.

Well, we know all about this
case, don’t we? So for me it is
interesting at best to see how they treat this case, as it informs how we look
at the rest of their data. The first
thing to note is that they call Zimmerman Hispanic and do not pick one of the
“angelic” pictures of Martin. Here’s
their description of the facts:

George Zimmerman was
driving in his gated neighborhood when he spotted Trayvon Martin, 17, walking
on a paved path between two sets of townhouses. Zimmerman, head of the
Neighborhood Watch, called the police to report a suspicious person and began
following Martin, first in a car and later on foot. Zimmerman's father said his
son said Martin then threatened him, punched him in the nose and knocked him to
the concrete. Zimmerman pulled a gun from a holster on his waist and shot
Martin. Zimmerman claimed self-defense and was found not guilty by a jury on
July 13, 2013.

As indicated in my last
Zimmerman post, this undersells the facts slightly. Martin actually broke Zimmerman’s nose and
was still beating him when Zimmerman fired, or at least that is what the
evidence supports.

It is also strange that they
depict the prosecutor as making the decision, when in fact it was the jury that
let him off.

Further, they stated that the
victim did not initiate the conflict.
That is a dubious reading of the circumstances. It all depends on what you mean by
“initiated.” If you mean had any
interaction at all, it is probably fair to say Zimmerman initiated it. But in terms of whether Zimmerman was the aggressor under the law, there is
absolutely no evidence of that. But all
of the evidence suggests that Martin did throw the first punch, although even
that doesn’t necessarily make Martin the aggressor. There might be no aggressor.

It also states that Zimmerman
pursued Martin, a point that was contested in the trial, although it might not
have been critical to the verdict. And
further, it states that the defendant could have retreated. As I have said before, the relevant
consideration is at the moment he fired and the evidence overwhelmingly showed
he was pinned down and could not retreat.

It also claims no one witnessed
the attack. But in fact Good did see
some of the fighting and there were plenty of ear witnesses. So that is another dubious claim.

So this example demonstrates how
poor the data might be. Some of its
weakness appears to come from ignorance of the law, and in other cases, they
seem simply ignorant of the facts.

Two black men in their fifties
come home to find two guys, one listed as Hispanic and one listed as white but
with a Spanish family name, robbing their home.
One was killed the other injured.
All four men were armed.

While you are not allowed to
straight up murder a person in your home, your freedom to use deadly force is
considerably greater. So honestly I see
this case as a wash, not proving much of anything except arguably that two
black men defending their homes were be treated like anyone else. Charges were not even brought.

Since there were no charges,
there was no SYG-immunity hearing. And
since this was the home, this is not about SYG-no-retreat. In all bluntness, this case has nothing to do
with SYG.

And here’s the case that most
calls into question the TBT’s racial classification. As you saw in the last case and in the
Zimmerman/Martin case, they do call people “Hispanic” when they think it is
warranted. But in the case of the victim,
Mr. Santiago, who looks like this...

...they describe him as a white male. I think most people would call him Hispanic. So they seem to be struggling with who is and
who isn’t Hispanic.

Anyway, the killer was a black
man.

This case bears some resemblance
to the increasingly famous Alexander case, in that a warning shot was
involved. The killer, Corey, believed he
heard someone trying to break in to his house and claimed he fired a warning
shot. Somehow that shot struck and
killed the victim, who was actually trying to break into his home.

Since this was defense of the
home, SYG-no-retreat doesn’t apply. But
the description suggests that SYG-immunity was invoked without opposition from
the prosecutor. Which is curious—if the
prosecutor didn’t oppose invoking that law, why charge him in the first place? Anyway, the immunity was granted.

This case involved a black victim
and a black killer. SYG-no-retreat
doesn’t apply because this was in the home, but I am at a loss to understand
why SYG-immunity was granted on these facts:

Kunta Grant called
911 to report an altercation with a teenager for whom he was legal guardian.
Grant was heard on the call saying, "I'm going to kill you." Police
arrived minutes later to find the victim, Daniel Amore, dead in the doorway of
the home. Amore had been stabbed once in the chest with a kitchen knife. Grant
said Amore, 18, was being disrespectful and he told the boy to leave the house.
Grant said Amore hit him in the mouth, then walked out to the carport and
smashed a window. The two men then faced off in the doorway, and Grant said
Amore punched him once again. Grant then stabbed the teen, killing him.

So it sounds from that
description of the facts like it’s hard to understand why deadly force was
justified. But then again in the Martin
case, the attack by Martin was described as mere punches as well, and it was
much more severe than that. So it may be
the case that the TBT is not telling us enough of the facts.

Another black victim and black
killer. Basically a man heard his
burglar alarm go off, opened his garage and saw two men running away. He shot and killed one of them trying to
escape, which is a very dubious assertion of self-defense (unless there is more
to it I am not hearing, a distinct possibility). But he was not even charged.

Since he was in his home when he
shot, SYG-no-retreat doesn’t apply.
Since he was not charged, SYG-immunity doesn’t either. In all bluntness this case doesn’t involve
Stand Your Ground at all.

Basically they were acquaintances
smoking pot in the killer’s house. For
some reason the victim and a second man jumped him, and started beating him up, even breaking
his nose. Jimeno had a gun. So the killer, Alexander Lopez-Lima, ran into
his bedroom and got a gun and shot them.
It is unclear if he shot them in his bedroom or not.

SYG-no-retreat doesn’t apply
because he was in his home. There also
doesn’t seem to be a SYG-immunity hearing.
The judge just dismissed the charges.
So this is another case where Stand Your Ground doesn’t seem to apply.

Basically, this was a fist-fight
between two Caucasian girls. Ludeman
started the fight but she brought fists and Wade, her killer, brought a
knife. This was one of many
confrontations over “the same boy.” Wade
was convicted of Second Degree murder, probably due to a finding of spite on
her part. There is no indication that
Ludemann had injured Wade.

There is no indication of a
SYG-immunity hearing. But this does
appear to be a failed attempt at a SYG-no-retreat defense.

Hispanic victim, white
shooter. Thomas Baker was jogging when
two teens (the victim and a second man) attempted to rob him. One took a swing at him and missed. He pulled out the gun and started shooting. Baker was not charged killing Mustelier.

Black victim, white shooter. Scott basically tried to rob Tyson Moore, and
even had his hands in his pocket in a way that suggested he had a gun. But he was not armed. Moore’s friend started fighting with Scott,
and as they fought, Moore stabbed Scott in the back. When deciding to charge Moore, while the
prosecutor cited SYG-no-immunity, these facts suggest that he was defending not
just his own life but his friend’s. Even
in retreat jurisdictions he is not required to leave his friend behind before
he is allowed to use deadly force to protect his friend, because that would be
absurd. So I would call this a dubious
SYG-no-retreat case, and since he was not charged SYG immunity didn’t apply.

This case involves three victims,
one injured, two killed, who are allegedly “white.” But they have the Spanish surnames and with TBT’s
sketchy record on this point we might suspect that society would construct them
as “Hispanic.” The killer, Norman
Borden, is white.

The TBT says they were armed with
bats, and indeed they had one, but they were also armed with a Jeep. As in, they
tried to run him down. Borden shot five
times as they charged him and then nine more times after they crashed. The prosecutors only asserted that the shots
after the Jeep stopped were not valid self-defense.

SYG-immunity was sought and
denied. But he was acquitted.

The facts also bear some
resemblance to the increasingly famous Alexander case, because Borden left and
came back with a gun. That is, they had
words, both parties left and then came back and the victims then charged him in
their jeep. But the difference was that
at the moment Borden used force he was actually under attack—as in, a Jeep was
charging right toward him in the first spread of shots. So that is the moment, if he had a duty to
retreat, when he would have had to try to retreat. And a deeper understanding of the facts would
be necessary to determine if that was viable.
If he could have ducked into an alley that the Jeep couldn’t have fit
through, then it would seem he had the ability to retreat. But he might not have.

A more difficult case is when he
shot after they crashed. Plainly he was
not presently under attack, but he might have been afraid that if he didn’t act
quickly he would have been again. He
might have reasonably believed that now
was the best time to stop this attack, while the car was not moving and a
relatively easy target. He might have
believed that if the jeep got moving again, the chances of him being able to
effectively stop it would go down considerably.
This makes the jury’s acquittal sound reasonable (though in all cases, I
am open to them being wrong).

Still if he had a duty to
retreat, he might have been convicted.
So this case might involve SYG-no-retreat.

White male victim, (old) white
male shooter, allegedly. The shooter has
a name, Jose Tapones, that makes you wonder again if society would consider him
to be Hispanic . And I will add, an unarmed victim. Basically they were having some kind of running
dispute, and Cote knocked on Tapones door to continue their dispute. Tapones answered the door and allegedly the
victim tried to come in and he shot him twice with a shotgun. The prosecutor argued that even if you buy
self-defense for the first shot, it so debilitated Cote it didn’t justify a
second shot.

Since he was allegedly defending
his home SYG-no-retreat didn’t seem to apply.
But he was denied SYG-immunity.
But he was ultimately acquitted.

One dead white guy, and an
injured allegedly white Joey Ruinato.
The killer was also white. The
victims were escorting a teen home who they believe the killer, Brandon Ward,
was abusing in some fashion. There is
conflicting testimony about who started the fight, but the article makes it
sound more like Ward attacked first.

SYG attempted to invoke
SYG-no-retreat, but for whatever reason they decided it was murder. The jury might have found that Ward attacked
first. If he did, then he would have a
duty to retreat even in Florida. If they
didn’t find he struck first, they might have instead decided that he did not
face death or great bodily harm at the hands of the victims.

There was no indication he sought
SYG-immunity.

There are many, many more cases
and I plan to at least dig through all the fatal cases and see what we can see
with this improved—but flawed—data. So
consider this the first installment of many to come. But what we are seeing so far is many cases
that do not involve Stand Your Ground in any appreciable respect invoking
it. I would add that I don’t think most
regular people would have a strong objection to a SYG-immunity hearing. If the Defendant can actively prove s/he is
innocent right at the beginning, what is the point of trying him or her?

We also see that they are using
dubious racial/ethnic classifications when dealing with Hispanics. We have seen one person most people would
call “Hispanic” being called white and suspect many more instances. This is relevant because if people think that
juries are being unfair according to color, we need to nail down how they would
be constructed racially and ethnically.
For instance, the suggestion early in the case that George Zimmerman
benefitted from a white “good old boys” network seems less likely when we
recognize that most white supremacist types are unlikely to recognize him as
one of their own.

But this best seen is a post in
progress. I don’t know where precisely
the data will lead me.

Let me finally say something
else. Those who say that support for
Zimmerman is race-based, or that if a black man did exactly the same thing he
would be in prison right now. What is
unique in the Zimmerman case is just how strong the evidence is in his
favor. O’Mara even suggested to the jury
that they should write at the bottom of the form as “innocent” rather than just
“not guilty” because he felt so confident in the evidence. By comparison, the prosecutors often admitted
that the evidence wasn’t clear on many topics.

There are a few critical
questions as a matter of law in that case.

The first is: who struck first? On that topic, there is literally no evidence
supporting the claim that Zimmerman struck first. Zimmerman says he didn’t and if you don’t
believe him, you have... nothing. So how
can a jury find, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Zimmerman struck first? It can’t.

Second, is: when Zimmerman fired
his gun, did he reasonably believe it was necessary to prevent death or great
bodily injury? Here the evidence gets a
little better. While no living witness besides Zimmerman saw him shoot, there is some evidence that tends to indicate Zimmerman is telling the truth. We had one witness who saw from far away who
thought she saw Zimmerman on top of Martin.
We had another who was much closer who saw the opposite. And we had the screams on the 911
recordings. Whoever was screaming was
most likely the one on the bottom.
Martin’s parents said in court it was their son. But Tracey Martin, his father, admitted that
the first time he heard the recordings that he didn’t think it was his son and
his brother’s testimony had similar problems.
By comparison, a parade of people swore it was Zimmerman: his mother,
his uncle, his neighbors, and so on. And
the defense, not the prosecution, introduced forensic evidence that the bullet
was fired from below. And finally,
Martin was found face down.

That seems to be reasonable doubt
right there.

That is not to say that racism
never plays a role in our system. Often cases
turn on whether a jury believes one person or another. Often whether a person is charged is based on
whether the police believe one person or another. It is in these kinds of subjective judgments
that racism is most likely to play a role.

But the Zimmerman case? There is very little subjectivity
involved. Yes, I suppose you could
believe the Martins when they say it is their son screaming on the call,
instead of Zimmerman, but there was so much evidence in his favor, it’s really
hard to see how that isn’t at least reasonable to doubt that he didn’t act in
self-defense.

Anyway, that is part one. When will the next part come? When it is ready. So stay tuned.

---------------------------------------

* Please note that my labeling of
certain parties as “killers” is not an accusation of wrongdoing. Zimmerman is the killer of Trayvon Martin,
but by all evidence that was a lawful killing.
If I wanted to be pejorative, I would have called them murderers.

---------------------------------------

Disclaimer:

I have accused some people,
particularly Brett Kimberlin, of
reprehensible conduct. In some cases, the conduct is even
criminal. In all cases, the only justice I want is through the
appropriate legal process—such as the criminal justice system. I do not want to see vigilante violence
against any person or any threat of such violence. This kind of conduct is not only morally
wrong, but it is counter-productive.

In the particular case of Brett
Kimberlin, I do not want you to even contact him. Do not call him. Do not write him a letter. Do not write him an email. Do not text-message him. Do not engage in any kind of directed
communication. I say this in part
because under Maryland law, that can quickly become harassment and I don’t want
that to happen to him.

And for that matter, don’t go on
his property. Don’t sneak around and try
to photograph him. Frankly try not to
even be within his field of vision. Your
behavior could quickly cross the line into harassment in that way too (not to
mention trespass and other concerns).

And do not contact his
organizations, either. And most of all, leave his family alone.

The only exception to all that is
that if you are reporting on this, there is of course nothing wrong with
contacting him for things like his official response to any stories you might
report. And even then if he tells you to
stop contacting him, obey that request. That
this is a key element in making out a harassment claim under Maryland law—that
a person asks you to stop and you refuse.

And let me say something
else. In my heart of hearts, I don’t
believe that any person supporting me has done any of the above. But if any of you have, stop it, and if you
haven’t don’t start.

About Me

Just a regular, sort of cranky moderately conservative lawyer, living in the greater Washington, D.C. and ruminating on law, life and the local spectator sport known as politics.
Btw, if you want to email me, write to edmd5.20.10 [at] gmail.com. I assume by now you understand that you are supposed to use one of those @ symbols for "[at]."